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Martin Narrod May 2014
Memory

     is  the birth of cool, it is rapture and ignominious spokesmanship unearthed. Packed into a slatted-wood crate, milking the obsession from cash-toting hands. Freeing itself from your bottom lip while life ticks itself away on a digital stock-exchange display. I am down and you are up, and you save pennies while I search for Chrysanthemums and vanilla-scented candles. Scent is my fifth grade spaceship,
     I hide it in my pocket and take it into the forest when the week is over. Adventure is the part of our story that's caught in between complaining about money and having clean sheets. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday my hands mend themselves back from bleach, their crevices cave under bright lights, I go to the garden strip and put dirt on my face, over my shoulders, and on my back. I make a altimeter from an alarm clock, and worry what will happen if your feet should ever touch the ground.
Relief
     is a sarcophagus, the satiny silk chrysalis I weave into invincibility. I make myself a small child with a demon-proof lair, no one comes in, not even you.  I see

     how drugs take out your heart and put you anew, fresh: orange, pink, ultramarine. A wave is a soft gesture for twilight, a slow walk among the greying statue towers, bliss extracted from person to person tedium. How you exclaim about **** music as if your temple home was unfocused by jazz or synth-electro.
     I forgot your room of quiet had no bells, no hope, and no notes of resolve. Tragedy was the desert of your six to sixteen, while I made an opus out of crystal glasses and Cran-Raspberry jars. Then it was the relief, Neptune's hands on your *******, red dots of ecstasy connecting you to a higher vibration. You felt it was time to start exercising. I didn't **** you for modifying your perception of color, degrading in a salt pool- I didn't own your ****** it was just a place I went into to write.
    
    Three years later. I was growing backward, I was sixteen, making you the muse in my doorway, a James Bond goddess unraveling my fingers on her silky skin, except your golden crown was really a turban of snakes, and instead of silk I was groveling underneath you. That was the sweat that Ryan Shultz said I garbled up into two pedestal doves, I aimed by eyes straight at the city of gold, and then inside me shucked out every piece of self-respect and vitrified my spirit, castrating my lips and my tongue for something to come to or come at, he said I lived under pointed stars and that lying isn't a good way to get over past phases of silence.

     A few days ago, it all game back to me, in a random series of songs on an iTunes playlist. One memory from an isolated beach outside a strawberry patch near Santa Cruz, a second, two hands cupped over the ears, my face closing in on her smoothed-out pink bottom lip on an over-exagerated car ride to the San Francisco airport, and the third was the mention of non-vegan banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, a birthday I celebrated several years earlier. All of them in the coda.
    
     Verse four unbelievable. It caught me straying from the next stressor at hand. What's next? I move my cold hands from a keyboard versing strange relapse of mind, or I tear out another page, whip across town, and peel stamps onto a postcard to send.
     They were all tails from a memory. A slowing ghost that cooed at me from far away, beating me up and down, pulling my eyes away from a scent I continually tried to remember.
Brad Lambert  Apr 2012
The Typist
Brad Lambert Apr 2012
Marcy Shultz was a typist.
She typed and typed the day through
but never wrote a single thing.

Each morning she would drink her coffee
with a sunken ring at the base of the mug.

It was her good luck charm,
an assurance that at one point in one moment
someone had truly, honestly cared.

At noon she would salsa with the air,
knowing **** well that she would later devour it.

But the air knew nothing,
Thought nothing, just stood there.
Air is naïve, and she was alone.

At night she would shower with the blinds open
figuring if someone looked, someone cared.

But nobody ever looked, and Marcy never blushed.
She'd type little tales on her little laptop.
Typed little stories of little couples

walking dogs
kissing in park benches
laughing at rude jokes
eating tiramisu in little cafés
weaving stories of passers-by
carving initials in wood
waking up in the dead of night
to hear the rhythm of the other's breathing
before
holding each other's hands
and whispering softly in the light of the full moon
flooding in like spilt milk from the cracked window
saying,
"We are together now
and if a moment like this is happening,
then a moment apart is only imaginary."
Then,
always,
always,
always,

The little couples would make love.
Their moans bled through the window
like timeless cries over the milky moon.

The cats in the alley would circle about the songs
echoing loud from the little couple's little love.

Then always, always, always with frustration
Marcy Schultz would toss the tales and go to bed
and the couples would live on in crumpled paper.
I haven't written for awhile, so here goes.
Everyday I wake up
I glance at the sky
To get a natural high
From spiritual sighs
Ha got me head now
Filled with sun energy
Felt like I was
Listen to a clergy
Man can you innerstand
My wisdom that
Sits in my hand
Palms never wet
An ultimate threat
To higher grounds
That's why I chill
Deep unda the ground
(underground) sounds is digital
No humpty dumpty
Just keep my techs
On me they wanna push me
Near the wall
But I can't
Since I got *****
Sweat drippin' soakin' draws
Cuz the pressure
Made me an outlaw
Had no choice to but to
Bruise and cruise through
Enemies I
Put a slug and leave em plugged
Electric shock from the glock
I'm aimmin at head
over the hill's forreals
This ain't no shill so just chill
As I  **** like bill alley oop
A Dunk so you can feel
Led in yo head now ya dead bleed
Out
So that'll give ya something
To think about
No screams and shouts so


Hold on be strong hold on Be Strong
Hold on be strong Hold on be strong
I ain't gone never led you wrong
So hold on Be Strong
Cuz I ain't gone never led you wrong
So christen that **** yeah

Now that the raindrops stop
But the reign  didn't stop
Thought I was dead
But I rise like early sunshine
Roosters cluckin'
Got these demons tryna **** in
Me in my sleep
I shake the shells
Going crazy naw
Its just my mind get lazy
Or they purp that hazed me
Got keep it
True to Screws legacy hive
Bump out the jive
All the way live
In your stereo
Can't break me or make me
Into a mold
Hard to get a hold
Of something you
Can't touch can't clutch
I plot rhymes like
****** from Dutch
Shultz my lyrical occult
Shakin' fools at the wake
Stay baked takin' estates
Keep to body
Frosted as flakes no undertakes
We take
Everything from the hand
Never took a reprimand
Dodge minivans
Stacked with multiple
Ski mask quick to blast
Yo *** in the past
Now you in cask-et
Racked like bread in a bask-et
Led turn em into ac-id
tryna hold on
But ya soul long gone so

Hold on be strong hold on Be Strong
Hold on be strong Hold on be strong
I ain't gone never led you wrong
So hold on Be Strong
Cuz I ain't gone never led you wrong
So christen that **** yeah
Martin Narrod Feb 2014
Memory

     is  the birth of cool, it is rapture and ignominious spokesman unearthed. Packed into a slatted-wood crate, milking the obsession from cash-toting hands. Freeing itself from your bottom lip while life ticks itself away on a digital stock-exchange display. I am down and you are up, and you save pennies while I search for Chrysanthemums and vanilla-scented candles. Scent is my fifth grade spaceship,
     I hide it in my pocket and take it into the forest when the week is over. Adventure is the part of our story that's caught in between complaining about money and having clean sheets. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday my hands mend themselves back from bleach, their crevices cave under bright lights, I go to the garden strip and put dirt on my face, over my shoulders, and on my back. I make a altimeter from an alarm clock, and worry what will happen if your feet should ever touch the ground.
Relief
     is a sarcophagus, the satiny silk chrysalis I weave into invincibility. I make myself a small child with a demon-proof lair, no one comes in, not even you.  I see

     how drugs take out your heart and put you anew, fresh: orange, pink, ultramarine. A wave is a soft gesture for twilight, a slow walk among the greying statue towers, bliss extracted from person to person tedium. How you exclaim about **** music as if your temple home was unfocused by jazz or synth-electro.
     I forgot your room of quiet had no bells, no hope, and no notes of resolve. Tragedy was the desert of your six to sixteen, while I made an opus out of crystal glasses and Cran-Raspberry jars. Then it was the relief, Neptune's hands on your *******, red dots of ecstasy connecting you to a higher vibration. You felt it was time to start exercising. I didn't **** you for modifying your perception of color, degrading in a salt pool- I didn't own your ****** it was just a place I went into to write.
    
    Three years later. I was growing backward, I was sixteen, making you the muse in my doorway, a James Bond goddess unraveling my fingers on her silky skin, except your golden crown was really a turban of snakes, and instead of silk I was groveling underneath you. That was the sweat that Ryan Shultz said I garbled up into two pedestal doves, I aimed by eyes straight at the city of gold, and then inside me shucked out every piece of self-respect and vitrified my spirit, castrating my lips and my tongue for something to come to or come at, he said I lived under pointed stars and that lying isn't a good way to get over past phases of silence.

     A few days ago, it all game back to me, in a random series of songs on an iTunes playlist. One memory from an isolated beach outside a strawberry patch near Santa Cruz, a second, two hands cupped over the ears, my face closing in on her smoothed-out pink bottom lip on an over-exagerated car ride to the San Francisco airport, and the third was the mention of non-vegan banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, a birthday I celebrated several years earlier. All of them in the coda.
    
     Verse four unbelievable. It caught me straying from the next stressor at hand. What's next? I move my cold hands from a keyboard versing strange relapse of mind, or I tear out another page, whip across town, and peel stamps onto a postcard to send.
     They were all tails from a memory. A slowing ghost that cooed at me from far away, beating me up and down, pulling my eyes away from a scent I continually tried to remember.
july hearne Jun 2017
i had taken the morning off from work
to get a botox injection
afterwards i went to starbucks
and bought a venti carmel something

to drink on my walk to work
somewhere inbetween starbucks
and work i noticed a man in a wheelchair
he was stuck

il·leg·i·bly
he was asking for help
illegibly

i had to put my coffee on the ground
to get his wheelchair up and moving again
the wheels ran over my foot
and the coffee got knocked over
and spilled on the ground
he didn't say thank you,
but he was in a wheelchair
and couldn't speak coherently

it hurt
and my toenails
were black for the entire summer

a few months later
i got a job at starbucks corporate
but quit with no notice after six months
because the manager
couldn't stop yelling about white privledge, me, and howard shultz

and i didn't want to turn into her.

her initials were kkk.
Donall Dempsey Aug 2021
O FORTUNA!
("You Will Become Yourself")

She's three.
A distinct reek of Old Spice!

"And who's been splashing on
my aftershave!"

I growl in my best
Daddy Bear voice.

"Me...me!"
she answers in her best George Washington.

"Mummy's perfume
smells yucky sweet!"

She a good judge of smell
this little girl.

What is...what isn't nice
sides with the Old Spice.

"So. Are we right then?"
I ask.

We go for a walk.
The cat on the leash.

Because.
We haven't got a dog.

And so we head off.
Dad, cat and little girl.

The cat none too pleased
at "What's that meow smell!"

Old Spice
not for cats.

Only for
Dads and daughters.

*

Old Spice is the smell of my Dad...it is forever him.... deeply ingrained in the olfactory memory of many generations...the essence of childhood thus becoming an archetypal perfume that stands for all things that he meant...safety, warmth, and security.
It was what I always gave him as a birthday and Christmas present....saving up all my pennies to be able to do so and foregoing chocolate and sweeties all during the year. My mum on the other hand
was always the equally iconic 4711. I still have both in my bathroom even now...how Proust like!
So it was odd to pass it on to...my daughter.
Her mum said it always reminded her of a Mexican drink called Horchata de arroz which is flavoured with the Aztec Marigold. and made her feel drunk even if she hadn't imbibed.
Darling daughter said it smelt of mummy's potpourri on the coffee table.
Oh and of... Daddy.
Old Spice was founded in New York by William Lightfoot Schultz in 1934. He was a soap and toiletries maker, and his first fragrance was, ironically, a woman’s scent: Early American Old Spice.
It is said that Shultz was inspired by his mother’s rose jar when creating this early version of Old Spice. A rose jar usually held a moist potpourri of rose petals, spices and herbs in a base of salt to preserve them. Those notes can still be detected in Old Spice’s products to this day. This perfume was released in 1938 to great acclaim, and he followed it with some men’s products in time for Christmas sales at the end of the year.
Although the original scent of classic Old Spice has most likely changed with time and reformulation (as a number of fragrances do), it still retains its primary scent profile, and it could be argued that it represents its own classification. Unlike many other men’s scents that fall easily into labels like fougère, leather or musk, Old Spice brought carnation, pimento, nutmeg and cinnamon to the forefront, omitting some of the classic men’s notes of pine, vetiver and lavender. This iconic mixture summoned up images of seafaring explorers and adventure, but the image and reality were often the same: Old Spice found its way wherever American G.I.’s were stationed during and after the war, and this helped to influence its proliferation around the globe.

As James the first of Aragon was supposed to have said in his best Valencian: "Açò és or, xata!" ("That's gold, pretty girl!")
Scott F Hemingway  Feb 2019
How
How
Ready A Flight

I miss
grenadine yearly
on the
newt yet
here with
Shultz a
moon in
Jupiter that
everyone slept
their keen  
to surface
now with
brown as
beans with
the syrup
are ready
this flight
I break mics, make em bleed, like punches from Mike, iron sight
Fist tight, I'll take all of your might, dont even front a fight, iight
We coming with the wickedest, vengeance, catered to sickness
Manifest, off the demon infested,
Yeah I'm connected, to the underworld, so dont disrespect it, before ya be resurrected,
I took jesus ****** cross, hung it like tree moss, flip the coin toss,
You'llfind me,in the valley of the lost, skull rallies, been the boss,
You suckas fallin, like Olympus Mr Snuffalufagus, plus the surplus,
All out maxed, Redd Foxx insults, graphic, as the Dutch Shultz,
Surrender your rights, see the shadows, hovering the night,
Smooth as a kite, winded suckas pretended, I'll end it flint,
The stones, cigarillos cherry foam, chase the taste, of ozones
I'm gone, watching the footsteps of rosemary's, baby slay me,
Naw I stay peaced, with the unseen, soul divine supreme, cream
Shattered many dead souls, added to the gehenna scrolls,
I'm just a disciple, with the laser eye rifle, cyclops the bible,
Raging in wrath, feel the thunder, lightening standing giraffe,
Catch the hands of nature, glad to hate cha, innovator, mater,
Let the saga continues, through graphic venues, I'll end you,
rip ya out ya skin, and leave blood on ya shoes, open portals of vessels,
Muscle man, champagne driven by my freaky women, giving,
Me they souls, bless they jellyrolls yo, I'm out of control,
Just another brothers,with the grit of johnny cash, bank rolls,
We beat the payroll, advoid pay tolls, that's how real Gs roll,
Watch cha know, split the kabbitz, lay out yachickens, gizzard
Poetry wizard, stick my tongue out like a lizard, keep lyrics exquisite,
Tip of ya toes, close down the shows, ya know how it goes,
It grows, more than the temptations, got the accommodation,
Change ya station, if you in hesitation, blaze gun nation,
For sticky situations, all of one one of all, never cease at downfall,






Gory road, move to a general,from a street lieutenant, innocent
Bystander, catch the wings, of a hate activate ya mental state,
See hostility at the alarming rate, wake for the leeching snakes,
Grip the peace, like a python, still let by gones be by gones,
I'm so gone, all I see is wrong, souls ringing like a gongs, its on
Caught the caption, blasting tactics steels of a black smith,
Hot ****, bound to ya melt ya with these classics, black magic,
I make it look so easy, but tragic suckas become mastered,
To the slaves of the intertwine, curved spines, of a feline,
See the horns incline, from her hair lines, sin never been so fine,
Apple decline, in the garden, step back to the game like Harden,
Charging, the game on credits, yall on debits, blacked out cards,
250K monthly, see what I see,
Naw probably, not you be hit harder than Ronnie Lott, guard ya snot,
Ya leaking, see the guns flickering, flashlight of a beacon,
Been a sinister deacon, silence the weaken, every first weekend,
See me peaking, speaking, paramount, calvary scout,
Lay out the KC, masterpiece barbecue sauce, it's the mosh,
Pit set up,I'm dead up, cant wait to this touch up, paint job,
9 to 5 robs, late night til the sun bright, soaring the heights,
Keen sight of an eagle, I squeeze through, out ya flesh,
Like beagle, bullets sniff you, now you laying like a vegetable,
Despicable, crews I bruise, leave em for the early mornin news,
Dont blow ya fuse, no truce, haters beware ya in for a scare,
Lay more scars to ya face, from unfiled ****** case,
No need to lie, what the **** for, naw I embezzle the muzzle,
Spread you out like puzzle, piece soon to be released,
Coroner, operations mud situations, change my caliper occupation,
Went from middle men, to a high man, baby bird assassins,
Who asking, about me, dont be part of the last dying trilogy,

— The End —